Glossary Term

8/12/2019 Glossary Term

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A

Abstract (Data) :

Combine several items into one, summarize, perform computation and take out a sub-fact fromone item to generate a new attribute and other actions that change data.

about significant activities of an enterprise.

Activity Analysis :The breakdown of an enterprise into manageable segments for detailed analysis regarding cost andperformance.

Analytical Model:A structure and process for analyzing a dataset. For example, a decision tree is a model for theclassification of a dataset.

Analytical Tools:This is an umbrella phrase used to connote software that employs some sort of mathematical

algorithm(s) to analyze the data contained in the warehouse.

Architecture:

An organized framework consisting of principles, rules, conventions and standards which serve to

guide development and construction activities such that all components of the intended structurewill work together to satisfy the ultimate objective of the structure.

Artificial Neural Networks:Non-linear predictive models that learn through training and resemble biological neural networks

in structure.

B

Bill of Activity (BOA):A listing of activities involved in the production of a certain output (cost object), together with the

number of times each component activity is performed. When these factors are extended by the

cost of each component activity, the result is the total unit cost of the final cost object.

Bill of Material (BOM):

A listing of all the sub-assemblies, intermediates, parts and raw materials that go into a parent

item, showing the quantity of each component required.

BPR:Business process reengineering is a radical improvement approach that critically examines,

re-thinks and re-designs mission product and service processes within a political environment.

Business Architecture:One of the four layers of an information systems architecture. A business architecture describes

the functions a business performs and the information it uses.

C

CAD/ CAM:The integration of computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing to achieve

automation from design through manufacturing.

Capacity Requirements Planning:The process of determining how much labor and/ or machine resources are required to accomplish

the tasks of production and making plans to provide these resources.

CASE:Computer-Aided Software Engineering.


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Client/ Server Architecture:A 'networked' environment where a smaller system such as a PC interacts with a larger, faster

system. This allows the processing to be performed on the larger system that frees the user's PC..

Closed-Loop MRP:The second step in the evolution of ERP. This is a set of business processes built around material

requirements planning and also including the additional planning functions of productionplanning, master scheduling, and capacity requirements planning.

D

Data Mining:A technique using software tools geared for the user who typically does not know exactly what he's

searching for, but is looking for particular patterns or trends.

Data Transformation:Involves creating information from data. This includes decoding production data and merging ofrecords from multiple DBMS formats. It is also known as data scrubbing or data cleansing.

Data Transport:

The mechanism that moves data from a source to target environment. See data transfer.Data Visualization:The visual interpretation of complex relationships in multi-dimensional data.

Data Warehouse:An implementation of an informational database used to store sharable data sourced from anoperational database of record.

DOLAP:Variously, Desktop OLAP or Database OLAP. The desktop OLAP variant is more commonlyused.

Drill-Down:A method of exploring detailed data that was used in creating a summary level of data. Drill-down

levels depend on the granularity of the data in the data warehouse.

Drill-Down/Up:

Drilling down or up is a specific analytical technique whereby the user navigates among levels of

data ranging from the most summarized (up) to the most detailed (down).

DSS:Decision Support System. This is application for analyzing large quantities of data and performing

a wide variety of calculations and projections.

E

EIS Variously defined as Executive/Enterprise/Everyone's Information/Intelligence

System/Service/Software.

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) The computer-to-computer exchange of information

between separate organizations using specific protocols.

End-User DataData formatted for end-user query processing; data created by end-users; data

provided by a data warehouse.

EnterpriseWhen used generically, an enterprise is defined as the aggregate of all functional

elements participating in a business process improvement action regardless of the organizational

structure housing those functional elements.

Enterprise DataData that is defined for use across a corporate environment.


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Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)ERP predicts and balances demand and supply. It is an

enterprise-wide set of forecasting, planning and scheduling tools, which links customers and

suppliers into a complete supply chain, employs proven processes for decision-making andcoordinates sales, marketing, operations, logistics, purchasing, finance, product development and

human resources.

Executive Information Systems (EIS)

Tools programmed to provide canned reports or briefingbooks to top-level executives. They offer strong reporting and drill-down capabilities. Today thesetools allow ad hoc querying against a multi-dimensional database, and most offer analytical

applications along functional lines such as sales or financial analysis.

F

Fast LoadA technology that typically replaces a specific DBMS load function. A fast load

technology obtains significantly faster load times by pre-processing data and bypassing data

integrity checks and logging.

Feed-ForwardA neural net in which the signals only flow in one direction from the inputs to the

outputs.

Financial Analysis and Reporting Application

Includes all types of analysis of all levels ofoperating financial data to determine financial efficiency and effectiveness within any functional

organization.

Functional Data WarehouseA warehouse that draws data from nearby operational systems.

Each functional warehouse serves a distinct and separate group (such as a division), functionalarea (such as manufacturing), geographic unit or product marketing group.

Functional Economic Analysis (FEA)A technique for analyzing and evaluating alternative

information system investments and management practices. It is also a document that contains afully justified proposed improvement project with all supporting data, i.e. business case or

decision package. FEA is also called a business case analysis.

.

HHistorical DatabaseA database that provides an historical perspective on the data.

HOLAPHybrid OLAP. A product that can provide multi-dimensional analysis simultaneouslyof data stored in a multi-dimensional database and in an RDBMS. Becoming a popular architecture

for server OLAP.

HypercubeAn OLAP product that stores all data in a single cube, which has all the applicationdimensions applied to it.

I

I-CASE Integrated Computer-Aided Software Engineering. A set of software design anddevelopment tools operating with an integrated shared repository to support the entire systems

development life cycle.

InformationData that has been processed in such a way that it can increase the knowledge of the

person who receives it.

Information ConsumerA person or software service that uses data to create information.

Information System An engineered arrangement of computers, communications facilities,

software code and data designed to support a business process.

Information Systems ArchitectureThe authoritative definition of the business rules, systems


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structure, technical framework and product backbone for business information systems. An

information systems architecture consists of four layers- business architecture, systems

architecture, technical architecture and product architecture.

Information Technology (IT)A package of equipment and/or systems related to data and/or

communications that can be used as an enabler of process reengineering.

Integration

The process of taking discrete products or components and making them worktogether as if they were one product; or the same concept applied to processes.

Intelligent AgentA software routine that waits in the background and performs an action when

a specified event occurs. For example, agents could transmit a summary file on the first day of the

month or monitor incoming data and alert the user when certain transactions have arrived.

L

Legacy SystemExisting systems and technology in which an organization has considerableinvestment and which may be entrenched in the organization.

LogisticsIn an industrial context, this term refers to the functions of obtaining and distributing

material and product. Also the tracking and movement of raw materials to finished products andconsumption throughout the supply chain.

M

.

Material Requirement Planning (MRP)The first step in the evolution of ERP. This is a set of

techniques, which uses bills of material, inventory data and the master schedule to calculate

requirements for materials.

MetadataMetadata is data about data. Examples of metadata include data element descriptions,

data type descriptions, attribute/ property descriptions, range/ domain descriptions, and process

/method descriptions.

MOLAPMulti-dimensional [database] OLAP. We avoid the use of this term because all OLAPsare by definition, multi-dimensional and prefer the more explicit MDB.

MRP IIManufacturing Resource Planning.

Multi CubeAn OLAP product that can store data in the form of a number of multi-dimensionalstructures, which together form an OLAP database. May use relational or multi-dimensional file

storage.

NNet Change MRPA method of processing MRP on the computer whereby the material plan is

continually retained in the computer. Whenever there is a change in requirement open order, or

inventory status, bills of material, or the like, a partial re-calculation of requirements is made onlyfor those parts affected by the change.

Network Integration

Describes the services involved in helping an organization design, build

and support local-area, wide-area, e-mail, and voice/data-networks that distribute information

seamlessly to points of decision-making and service. These networks are typically multi-vendor,using premier hardware and software products from leading suppliers.

O

ObjectA person, place, thing or concept that has characteristics of interest to an environment. In


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terms of an object-oriented system, an object is an entity that combines descriptions of data and

behavior.

OLAPOn-Line Analytical Processing. Refers to a category of applications and technologies

for collecting, managing, processing and presenting multi-dimensional data for analysis and

management purposes.OLAP ClientEnd-user applications that can request slices from OLAP servers and providetwo-dimensional or multi-dimensional displays, user modifications, selections, ranking,

calculations, etc., for visualization and navigation purposes. OLAP clients may be as simple as a

spreadsheet program retrieving a slice for further work by a spreadsheet literate user or ashigh-functioned as a financial modeling or sales analysis application.

OLTPOn-Line Transaction-Processing. Operational systems for collecting and managing the

base data in an organization, such as sales order-processing, inventory, accounts payable, etc.Usually offer little or no analytical capabilities.

Operational DatabaseThe database of record, consisting of system-specific reference data and

event data belonging to a transaction update system. It may also contain system control data suchas indicators, flags and counters.

Operational or OLTP DatabaseOperational data is the data collected from operations such as

order-processing, accounting, manufacturing, marketing, etc. Most modern companies collect

most of this data using a form of on-line transaction-processing (OLTP). Data generated by thesesystems is generally not in a format that makes for efficient query processing or analysis.

P

Portability The ability of an ERP system to run various operating systems, databases and

networks without requiring any major adjustments or sacrificing any functionality.

Product Architecture One of the four layers of an information systems architecture. It

describes standards to be followed in each portion of the technical architecture and vendor-specifictools and services to apply in developing and running applications.

Product StructureSee bill of material.

Product/ Performance Analysis ApplicationAnalyses to define how well a product or groupof products is performing in the marketplace and how well it compares to or is positioned against

competitive products. Can include analyzing customer response data, warranty exercise

information and sales trends.

Q

Q&R Query and Reporting tool. Normally used for list-oriented reporting from relational

databases.

Quality- The degree of excellence possessed by a product, service or other output of a business

activity or business process (tradition definition). The total quality management definition of

quality is conformance to the customer's requirements.

Quality ApplicationA manufacturing related application that analyzes manufacturing and/ orsales data to determine how to improve the manufacturing process. Typically helps standardize

production data so that the same quality products can be manufactured in any factory location.

Query ToolsSoftware that allows a user to create and direct specific questions to a database.These tools provide the means for pulling the desired information from a database. They are


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product and systems architecture.

Technical Infrastructure EngineeringThe application of a consistent set of techniques to the

operation of the basic facilities, equipment and installations required for the functioning ofinformation systems.

Technical IntegrationThe process of making technical requirements consistent between and

among the internal architecture structures of an organization.TransformationA re-expression of the data such as aggregating it, normalizing it, changing itsunit of measure, or taking the logarithm of each data item.

V

Values Collective judgments of worth desired and shared with the organization. Also the

specific facts represented by data.

Vendor Performance Analysis ApplicationAnalyzing data that show how well a vendor is

meeting its requirements from the standpoints of quality, cost and supply perspectives. Related tothe supply chain management application.

Vertical Applications Vertical applications are industry-specific or function-specific

applications that have one or more DSS elements either incorporated into them or are front-ends toanalysis tools provided by other vendors. Examples might be fraud detection in the banking

industry or risk analysis in the insurance industry.

VisualizationVisualization tools graphically display data to facilitate better understanding of its

meaning.

VITALAn acronym for Virtually Integrated Technical Architecture Life cycle.

W

Warehouse Business DirectoryProvides business professionals access to the data warehouse

by browsing a catalog of contents.

Warehouse Technical DirectoryDefines and manages an information life cycle, a definition ofwarehouse construction, change management, impact analysis, distribution and operation of a

warehouse.


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Documents

Glossary Term